GE to award home energy winners
On Thursday morning, GE will host a day-long event where it plans to announce the latest winners of its $200 million smart grid challenge that are specifically focused on energy use in the home. Read more »
Westly to Focus More on Green Buildings for Future Fund
Greentech investor Steve Westly has been out there raising a new $175 million cleantech fund, and recently closed on the first $50 million. Particularly interesting is that Westly plans to have a special focus on green building technology for the new fund. Read more »
GE, Intel Back Smart Building Startup Scientific Conservation
Smart building startup Scientific Conservation has brought on GE as an investor. While the company announced a Series B round of $15.65 million earlier this year, this morning Scientific Conservation said it has boosted that round to $19 million from GE and Triangle Peak Partners. Read more »
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Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
Is the greentech industry headed for a breakout year or is it retrenching for hard times to come? The first three months of 2011 provided evidence that could support both assertions, with a big rise in venture capital investment and a big drop-off in global energy financing. Solar power remained the largest green technology sector in terms of venture capital investment, while in the world of electric vehicles, GM’s Chevy Volt hybrid and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf — the first two mainstream plug-in vehicles — hit the showroom floors in significant numbers. Meanwhile the smart grid sector’s relative dearth of VC investment was more than made up for by the massive round of acquisitions. Companies mentioned in this report include NRG Energy, Microsoft, Silver Spring Networks, Tesla and BrightSource Energy. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Silver Lake Kraftwerk’s Cleantech Dream Team Keeps Growin’
If there is a cleantech investing renaissance coming, I’d bet on the growing team at Silver Lake Kraftwerk to find it. According to Dan Primack at Fortune, Silver Lake has recruited former Draper Fisher Jurvetson cleantech VC Raj Atluru to join its new cleantech fund. Read more »
IBM Buys Tririga for Smarter Building Software
IBM has long talked about making acquisitions in the smart grid space. Here’s the latest: Tuesday morning, IBM announced it has acquired Tririga, a startup that makes sustainability and building energy management software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read more »
Scientific Conservation Scores $15.65M for Smart Buildings
Making the automation systems in commercial buildings smarter – that’s the idea behind startup Scientific Conservation, which today announced a new $15.65 million funding round led by DFJ Growth Fund Managing Director (and Internet exec entrepreneur) Barry Schuler. Read more »
BuildingIQ’s Smarter Buildings, Now With Demand Response
Mike Zimmerman, the CEO of building automation software startup BuildingIQ, says his company has for the first time met a utility’s demand to turn down power to manage peak load, automatically with a building control system in Perth, Australia. Read more »
Scientific Conservation Launches, Brings Predictive Analytics to Buildings
Selling software as a service through the web has helped make software more affordable and distribution more efficient. Now a startup called Scientific Conservation, which officially launched today after several years in relative stealth mode, wants to bring the software-as-a-service model to the commercial building automation […] Read more »
